


A Moment's Understanding

by Cheyenne_6698



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Elia escapes from Kings Landing, F/M, Infidelity, POV Elia Martell, Underage Pregnancy, bonding moment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:41:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23884666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cheyenne_6698/pseuds/Cheyenne_6698
Summary: After escaping Kings Landing, Elia Martell didn't know what to expect when she arrived at the Tower of Joy, or exactly what to make of the young girl that her husband had runaway with. One-shot.
Relationships: Elia Martell/Lyanna Stark/Rhaegar Targaryen, Elia Martell/Rhaegar Targaryen, Lyanna Stark/ Robert Baratheon (mentioned), Lyanna Stark/Rhaegar Targaryen
Comments: 18
Kudos: 51





	A Moment's Understanding

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own GOT or ASOIF.

Elia could not help herself but fume as she sat in the sitting room of the love nest her husband had built himself in her homeland with his new lover. The Tower of Joy, he had dared to call it. More like the Tower of Misery. Her misery at being abandoned, the misery of the people who were now caught up in this war because of it, and now the misery of the woman who had caused it all as she found out the fate of her father and eldest brother. Currently, Lyanna Stark was in the middle of cursing Rhaegar with every name under the sun in both the Common Tongue as well as the Old, with tears pouring down her face as she threw anything her hands could get on.

“You promised you would tell them! You promised you would protect them, that they would be safe! You liar! Bastard! Nách mór an diabhal thú!” *

Rhaegar just stood there, barely offering a word in his defense. Not that there was nothing that really could be said now in his defense. And as much as Elia hated the woman in front of her, she had been in court the day Rickard and Brandon Stark had met their gruesome fate, and Elia could say honestly that no one deserved that being done to them.

“And you would now go to him and fight for him now? After what he has done?Nár eirigh an lá leat!” **

“Lyanna, I must do this. No matter what, he is my father and the king. Everything shall work out in the end. You shall see.”

“I shall see? I shall see? Go dtachtar le d’anáil thú!” ***

Finally, the Ser Arthur Dayne stepped in-between them catching the Lady Stark’s raised arms as she prepared to throw a statuette at the prince. “My lady, please. Calm yourself. There is no way that this stress is good for either you or the child.”

Ah yes, the child. A surprise that Elia had not been anticipating when she and her uncle had arrived after he had whisked both her and her children away from the captivity of both the Mad King and King’s Landing itself. How happy she had been to be back in the freedom of Dorne only to discover this is where her husband had hidden himself. 

“I am sorry you feel that way, Lyanna. I truly am. But I must go.” He tried to kiss his little wretch then, though she resisted with the fury of a she-cat, or perhaps more correctly a she wolf her inner voice whispered, before he resigned himself to pressing a kiss to her forehead, and walking over to do the same to her. And then Rhaegar was gone, and Lyanna, for all of her words of hatred towards him, watched mournfully from the window as he road away. Silence stretched uncomfortably then between the two women, broken only by the occasional coo of Aegon from where he slept in his cot. But Elia had a burning question for the younger woman that she had to have answered. 

“I do not even understand how it was that the two of you met.”

“I was the knight of the laughing tree.”

Elia could not hide the confusion from her eyes. “What?”

“At the tourney at Harrenhall,” Lyanna sighed as she turned to face her. Harrenhall. Of course, that would be where all of this began. She had tried to block out as much as she could of it. The whispers, the pitying stares. All over a crown of blue roses. But perhaps there was more that had happened that day than she had realized. “The mysterious knight that angered the king? I was him. Those knights squires had dishonored one of my father’s bannermen, and I’ve always been told I ride well. The idea just kinda came to me, and my brother Benjen helped me find the armor. Everything was going just like we planned, but then the king became so angry, so I ran. But then..”

“Rhaegar found you.” Elia finished, everything about that humiliating day now clicking into place in her mind. She remembered how angry Aerys had been that day, quite literally spitting mad as he had demanding the head of the knight with the shield bearing a weir wood tree. She remembered him sending Rhaegar after him, only for her husband to return empty-handed, claiming the knight had disappeared into thin air, leaving naught but his shield.

“Yes, and he promised he would keep my secret. He said he was impressed that I rode so well in my first tourney. He said no one would ever find out. But then he won, and he brought me those roses that should have been yours and I couldn’t refuse them without everyone questioning who he would notice me in the first place….”

As the young girl continued to ramble, pacing this way and that around the room, Elia noticed for the first time exactly how young she was. Barely flowered, and already growing with her husband’s child. Not for the first time, she cursed Rhaegar’s foolishness, how his never-ending desire for a third child had brought them to this point. “I see. Well, that explains how the two of you met. But now, how did you come to be here?” In Dorne, went unspoken, in my husband’s bed, heavy with his babe.

This questioned stilled the rambling, and Lyanna turned from her pacing so her grey eyes met hers. “Rhaegar came to me. Almost a year after the tourney, asking me of what I knew of the legend of Azor Ahai. At first, I didn’t know what he was speaking about, but the more he told, the more it began to sound like the stories of the Long Night that my nurse Nan used to tell me, of the battles that were before my forefather Bran built the great wall. Of the Others who had murdered all in their path, uncaring if it was kings or sheepherders, men or women, old men or babes. He spoke of signs that something was coming, that he had written his Uncle Aemon who is there, and that he had said the same. And then…..”

“And then?”

“He said something so peculiar. The dragon must have three heads.”

Elia knew that phrase, and it chilled her to the bone to hear it pouring forth from a Stark's lips. “The dragon must have three heads?”

“Yes, and so he must have three children as well. He told me of your misfortune, my Princess, and said as such that he would have to be as the first Aegon was, with two wives instead of one to fulfill the prophecy. But that he needed a woman who’s bloodline could rival your own. Who had once ruled in their own right as well to ensure a balance within the children.”

And so now the picture became clear to Elia. Everyone within the Seven Kingdoms knew the history of the Starks. Once the Kings of Winter, they had ruled in a line unbroken for over 8,000 years before the coming of the Targaryens, and knelt only to prevent the unneeded slaughter of their people. And those people had adored them for it, and continued to do so. It was true that they hid in their cold and frigid North, uncaring for the most of what happened within the rest of the kingdoms, but when drawn out, they had always acted nobly. Of course this girl, with their blood flowing through her veins, had offered herself as a solution to the crown prince’s problem. The same girl who had thought the honorable answer to the disgrace of a Bannerman was to disguise herself and win retribution. “And so you have become his broodmare. But tell me, Lyanna Stark. What do you have to gain from this?”

“Freedom, or so I thought. I have no want nor need for crowns or proclamations of love, and have longed for a way to escape the confining bounds of the marriage that was set before me. I have always had too much wolf’s blood in me according to my brother Ned, to want for anything else besides the ability to wish for the ability to go where I want, do what I want. Rhaegar has asked me for one child, and in return, I may go where I wish. Whether that is to remain in the capital with you and him, or return North to my family. But now I do not know. Rhaegar also said that he would explain this to my family, to you, but he did not. Instead now, my father and eldest brother are dead by his father’s hand, and he now rides to wage war against my other brothers. And I am trapped here, away from it all, away from them, and all I want to do is to wring his neck. ”

It was good to hear that there was no childish inclination of love between the two, and Elia could not fault the girl for longing for freedom, especially when a brut like Robert Baratheon was looming in the near future. Against her better judgement, she felt herself warming up to Lyanna Stark. “And the babe?”

Lyanna smiled down at her protruding stomach, smoothing a hand over her gown. “Rhaegar is sure that it is a girl, his Visinya. But something inside me insists it is a boy, that he will be a wolf pup, more Stark than Targaryen, and I long for that with all of my heart.”

“Have you thought of a name then? If it is a boy instead of a girl like Rhaegar hopes.”

“I know he will insist on it being something like Jaeharys or Aemon, something undeniably Targaryen that ties him to it. But I have liked thought of Jon.”

“Jon? As in Jon Arryn?”

“Nay, more like Jon Stark, the great King of Winter who drove the pirates from the Wolf’s Den. But perhaps naming him after a king is too audacious when he will never be more than the second son. So perhaps I could name him after Cregan, who came down from the North to be the Hand of the King in the Hour of the Wolf. He did his duty to Aegon III and then returned home, seeking no glory for himself.”

Elia could see how the other woman’s eyes lingered on her son as she finished those words, and see her underlying message. Lyanna’s son to aid her precious Aegon as he grew to be king, helping his brother, but always in the shadows, named for a man who was the same way. Or perhaps the boy would bear a Targaryen name, no connection to his mother’s family except for his looks, no place except as the unwanted spare to the heir. No, that could only brew hostility between the two. As much as she had at first held within her heart a neverending spark of hatred and jealousy after the humiliation she had been put through, there was now forming a fragile bond of understanding between them. Both had been noting more than pawns to the man who now tied them together, and both would bear his children to hopefully bear his prophecy fruit. Elia could see two heads, one as white as the moonlight, the other dark as shadows, running through the gardens at the Red Keep. The boys, not even a year apart, would be as twins, thick of thieves, trouble following wherever they went. They would grow strong and tall together, and when Aegon finally ascended the throne of his forefathers, his brother would be there, right beside him, ready to shoulder the burdens together. And behind them would be both her and Lyanna. They together would raise their sons to be good men, to not repeat the mistakes of their father. The sister wives of the Conqueror reborn. Elia reached out to still the younger woman’s wringing hands and intertwined their fingers together offering her a shy smile. “I have always wanted a sister, and I think Jon is a fine name.”

**Author's Note:**

> George RR Martin has said for himself that his is not a linguist, and as such has not really developed the language of the First Men too throughly, so for Lyanna’s curses, I actually did some research into Gaelic ones as I feel like that is very fitting in the North.
> 
> *Aren’t you the devil  
> **That you may not be successful on the day  
> ***That you may choke on your breath


End file.
